I am … unhindered by talent

Albert Einstein spent several years in Pasadena, California, working at CalTech. Einstein wasn’t known for being terribly focused on his surroundings, and apparently many of the locals were terrified that they would go down in history as the person that mowed down Einstein as he stepped out into the road without looking. (Apparently he left a check of some size in a library book - he’d been using it as a bookmark instead of depositing it.)

Related posts

• You’d almost think women were important (1)
• You have to either laugh or cry (and I’ll help you do both) (0)

A wonderfully nerdly performance of mental arithmetic. I found his use of word mnemonics to remember large numbers quite cool.

Related posts

• Transforming our thoughts about teaching (2)
• You have to either laugh or cry (and I’ll help you do both) (0)

Emma Clarke has been doing the official voice overs for the London Underground since 1999, and she has a page of spoofs she’s recorded in her sillier moments. Definitely fun; I was fond of this one, clearly aimed at Sub-Evil and me:

We’d like to remind our American tourist friends, that you are almost certainly talking too loud.

Given that WeatherGirl’s initial impression of me was “a loud, obnoxious American” (a position 18 years of marriage has only slightly softened), it does seem likely that it applies.

Related posts

• The things you learn on the Tube (0)
• Now I say something about walking uphill to school - both ways (2)

Looking for something fun for a Friday afternoon? Hard to beat the joys of Launchball! This is an amazingly fun and clever little game, and I wasted all too many minutes going through the levels. And it’s from the Science Museum just down the way in London.

Don’t blame me for this distraction - it’s all Kjell’s fault.

Related posts

• So, so cool looking — but I can’t play yet! (3)
• More fun (with skulls) in London (1)

This is hilarious. They walk you through the stepwise changes if Redmond had designed GMail. Thanks to John Naughton for the pointer.

Related posts

• What?!? Actually base web design on data?!? (0)
• Can we please remember that M$ hasn’t completely taken over the world? (1)

A total hoot!

Yeah, I remember those glacial dot matrix printers and the screech of 18.8 modems. They were the bomb in their day, though, and I’m sure that most of what we’re all trendy about today will look equally dated in 10 or 15 years.

Heaven help us all if national security were to depend on finding a payphone these days!

Thanks to TechCrunch for the pointer.

Related posts

• It’s worth 10 minutes of your time (1)
• An excellent follow-up to the Lessig video (3)

John Naughton was the first to bring this gem to my attention. This is a hilarious explanation of how modern investment works (or doesn’t).

My one rub is their decision to characterize the debt risk as an “unemployed black man sitting on a crumbling porch somewhere in Alabama in a string vest”. It perpetuates the idea both that blacks are poor and that the poor are black, neither of which is universally true, and neither of which are useful or desirable ideas to propagate. A lot of the people that got these loans were (regardless of their skin color) well meaning, if often desperate folk, and we hardly need to blame our economic woes on the fact that the financial world will loan pretty much any of us far more money than makes any good sense.

Related posts

• No related posts.

I realize that this will probably just encourage them, but it’s just too amazing to pass up. Coming home tonight I was listening to the 31 Oct Science Talk podcast which features a fun interview with Susan Warren, author of the book Backyard Giants: The Passionate, Heartbreaking, and Glorious Quest to Grow the Biggest Pumpkin Ever. It would appear that some people out there that take their veggies very seriously.

The world record weight for a pumpkin in 1980 was apparently around 500 pounds, but they’ve been smashing those records, with Joe Jutras setting a new record a few weeks ago of 1,689 pounds! That’s a serious piece of fruit. These are apparently large enough that they cut some of them in half to make kayaks and then have races with them.

I definitely recommend the interview, and I’m guessing that the book is probably good as well. The photo is from BigPumpkins.com.

Related posts

• No related posts.

Those crazy folks at eatbrains.com organized a flashmob-esque event wherein a large number of brain eating zombies roamed a high end shopping district in S.F. doing, well, zombie kinds of things like chewing on iMacs at the Apple Store. (But can zombies really flash?!? Or was it more of an amble-mob event?)

I love the fact that the Apple Store employees thought it was cool to be invaded:

It may be worth noting that the Westfield Mall and Disney security tried to bar the zombies from entering, but Apple store security did not. In fact, salespeople were jostling one another for a position where they could take the best photo of the zombies (or themselves with the zombies, or their brains being eaten by the zombies).

Great quote from focalmatter.com:

In an ironic twist of fate, the zombies meet another group of people seeking brains to consume: Scientologists.

Apparently this is my 500th blog post. And to think that I could have done something of consequence to commemorate this essentially insignificant event :-).

Related posts

• No related posts.

Wookieepedia

46,273 articles since March 4, 2005

The Star Wars encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

’nuff bloody well said. I blame PeeZed for the pointer - he has so much to answer for!

Related posts

• No related posts.